News stories and various other documents, for example, contain various phrases one can term “events”. Examples of such events are phrases such as “bankruptcy filing” or “going bankrupt”. Typically these event phrases are made up of more than one word. A common operation is to scan a news story, or other text, for event related information. That is, a person might typically scan text for particular information related to a particular event.
However, when scanning news stories for event-related information, one may not have enumerated all the possibilities for how to represent a particular event or related events. For example, “file for bankruptcy” would be considered a related event to “bankruptcy filing”, “filing for bankruptcy”, and “filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy”. Similarly, “job cuts” can represent “cut 5 percent of jobs”, “cut 290 jobs”, “cutting 600 jobs”, or “cutting about 230 jobs”, for example. Known techniques fail to appreciate and effectively address these concerns.
Accordingly, the invention addresses these problems and others.